Tugboat Names Michael Riffle as Chief Technology Officer

The team brings on a veteran AI engineer to scale its agentic claims engine.

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, July 1, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Tugboat, the consumer insurance platform that provides property owners expert-level claim support, today announced that Michael Riffle has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer. Riffle joined the team in April and now leads engineering and product following the momentum of Tugboat’s oversubscribed $3M seed round.

Riffle brings more than a decade of building and leading engineering teams across early-stage technology companies. He joins Tugboat from 1848 Ventures, where he worked as a venture CTO and technologist building AI tools for small and medium-sized businesses. Former roles include Engineering Manager and architect at LP, Venture CTO at Boston Consulting Group Digital Ventures, and Head of Engineering at Bot1, Inc.

He specializes in taking technology once reserved for well-resourced players and putting it in the hands of people who couldn’t access it before.

Riffle’s mission oriented focus is what connected him to the founders. Cameron and Aaron Mooney built Tugboat from years of fieldwork as insurance adjusters, resolving thousands of property claims across dozens of carriers. Their grounded operational knowledge is the kind of problem that Riffle has spent his career engineering around.

His near-term focus is the technical foundation. Riffle is bringing the platform fully in-house, replatforming it onto a more scalable architecture, and deepening the agentic engine so its guidance gets sharper with every claim it handles. That work supports the priorities behind the seed round: a full-code, partner-ready platform integrated with major property management systems.

"I was drawn to Tugboat because of the team’s mission," said Michael Riffle, CTO of Tugboat. "Tugboat supports families during the highest-stakes moments in a household's financial life. Cameron and Aaron know how claims actually work, and my job is to turn that knowledge into software that makes the claims process as painless as possible."

"I'm thrilled to bring Michael onto the team as our first Chief Technology Officer," said Cameron Mooney, CEO and Co-Founder of Tugboat. "Michael has spent his career taking technology that was once out of reach for everyday people and making it accessible. His technical depth on agentic systems is what we need to build this right, and his instinct for who we're building it for is what makes him the right person to get this in the hands of more homeowners."

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About Tugboat
Tugboat is a consumer insurance support platform that gives homeowners expert-level claim support. The company gives homeowners access to the same expertise carriers use, helping members document damage, challenge denials, and negotiate fair settlements. Tugboat has helped members across 30 states recover more than $15 million they would not have collected on their own, averaging an additional $54,000 per claim.

Kamila Khasanova
On Top Strategy
kamila@ontopstrategy.com

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